Tuesday, August 3, 2010

As a treat, I made a fruit-based breakfast for myself and my parents as I was staying at their farmhouse for the weekend. Before dealing with the hot elements of the meal, I made a new treat I primalised from an old favourite:

Optional - some sweetener, some shaved dark chocolate, a pinch of cayenne, a splash of lemon or lime, a touch of vanilla, chopped berries, a mashed banana... The possibilities are endless!

Method:

This one's a doddle! Scoop out the flesh of the avocados, and combine with the cacao (and sweetener) with a blender or a spoon and elbow grease. Done!

Serve immediately, or chill in the refrigerator before needed. A wonderful, rich accompaniment for a fruit dessert, or pancakes! And I love it on its own - such healthy fats, gourmet flavour, and all the goodness found in cacao.

Serving suggesting: use as a dip for fresh strawberries - oh my word!!

My Tropical Breakfast of Kings!

What do you get when you combine:

Sliced banana, fried in coconut oil and sprinkled with cinnamon

Mixed berries - mine were frozen, so I defrosted and partially cooked them by dry-frying.

20 comments:

Interesting, I just tried avocado-banana-cocoa pudding yesterday and didn't like it. I might try it again like you have it without banana, just the avocado and cocoa.

I have been adding in a couple days a week of eating more carbs. If I do everyday I just end up craving it and getting digestion issues. But a couple days a week really helps with energy and sleeping. Plus it adds some good tasty options to the menu!

Kat, if you like really dark chocolate, just choc and avocado is brilliant. If you can't stand anything above 85% cocoa, add some sweetener. Adding banana would make it too sweet for me, and possibly change the texture. Just the two ingredients makes for creamy perfection. Good luck!

Hi Keri! Glad you like my recipe, though I'm intrigued as to how you found me considering your obvious penchant for grain consumption...

FFF - avocado allergy!? Boo! I've only recently been able to consume avocado again after being scared off almost 10 years ago by a really nasty sushi roll made of gooey green muck! Now I have to pay $3 for just one organic avocado, but it's delicious!

Interesting to read about your rebound thing. I very successfully followed the low car/ primal way of eating earlier this year for about four months. I came down to a weight I was happy with and my digestive system seemed to be very very happy not having to deal with grains. In the last few weeks, however, I seem to have regained some of the weight. A lot of it is to do with increased craving of carby things, but the level of temptation now isn't more than before... if anything it's less. I was just wondering in the last few days whether it is my body's way of trying to compensate for the extra low carbing I was doing.

I've edited this post since my trials this week exploring the "low-carb is bad for the metabolism" theory is obviously bogus, at least in my case. My body can obviously handle VLC and even ZC without any metabolic issues once keto-adapted. Eating more fruit and starch gave me an energy boost, but also impacted my mental clarity, and now I have caught a nasty cold - my first in a loooong time! My moods have been all over the place as well, and I hate farting!

Cloudy - I think you have to admit what I had to admit - that as much as we like to say that fat accumulation is all down to physiological imbalances etc, it still can have a lot to do with psychological factors: emotional eating, weakening will-power, etc. Pay Now Live Later recently posted that weight loss is primarily a matter of desire - we can stick to ANY plan so long as we have the desire to do so. When DepTran was making me feel hungry, I ate - it made me feel better at that moment. If I had really really wanted to, I could have ignored the hunger and stayed skinny. It would not have been fun. Low-carb makes fat loss easy, since you don't get hungry. However, even if we don't physically crave carbs, we can start giving into the present comfort element that those foods still have for us.

When we lose the drive to lose weight (i.e. when we don't have much fat left, if any) that immediate impetus dwindles and we start thinking "well, I don't have to lose more weight, so one won't hurt..." The more I can come to accept this point and stop blaming my body, the better chance I have of going back to 'deprivation' in order to achieve fat loss. No, I didn't break my metabolism, I broke my will-power (even if the decision was forced by drug-fuelled hormonal imbalance).

It's not going to be true for everyone, but if you're sitting there going "Hmm, I've been eating more carbs lately, and I've gained some weight back.. I wonder how that happened", then the answer is probably more obvious than you'd like to admit. :)

Jezwyn - Yeah, I don't really know if low-carb lowers metabolism, but it fits my experience. I like to put the idea out there because I wish I would have heard it earlier. I wouldn't call it bogus, but yeah, I really don't know for sure.

I lost a decent amount of weight eating a Cordain higher-carb paleo diet (lots of fruit, veggies, and nuts). After being VLC for 6 months just eating a potato made me gain weight! Obviously there has been a metabolic change.

I can't eat fruit without feeling unwell too -- but is that a result of fruit being bad or us having adapted to a (very) low carb diet? My sister on a low-fat diet gets sick eating too much fat.

I miss the days when I could eat whatever I wanted, stay thin and feel fine (I never really had weight problems, but I am 24). I can't help but feel my metabolism has been compromised by this style of eating. I still eat low-carb because eating too many carbs makes me feel sick!

Kyle - any dieting lowers metabolic rate if you are under-eating. I rarely under-eat; when I eat meat only, I even eat above my metabolic rate! My metabolism is roaring - my problem is still, as confirmed by this week's experiment, insulin resistance.

I ate fruit and sweet potato long enough for my digestion to cope again (and actually never had the issues I was expecting) - the 'sickness' that I did experience have nothing to do with adaptation and everything to do with carb intolerance: blood glucose fluctuations causing mood swings, brain fog and insane cravings. I didn't notice any weight gain though, which I attribute to that fact that I'm at my old weight which my body maintains easily (I'm 25 so my body would still be able to tolerate my old disgusting habits like downing a whole large pizza and following it with a litre or more of lite ice-cream without gaining weight - let's not think about the rest of the damage though!). I've been about 15kg overweight since I was 15, and nothing before starting to control my insulin has changed that.

The key to health (inc being a healthy weight) for me is managing my blood glucose. I will be going back to a ZC approach, paying careful attention to my quality of stamina, sleep and concentration. I'm going to eat as much as I want. I already know I feel good eating this way, but I'll be listening closely this time around for signs of metabolic slowdown. It's not evolutionarily logical, but I'm not taking any chances.

Most of all, I need to rekindle that desire to get healthy, and get rid of the comfort-eating dimension I think I reattached to food. I'll still try new recipes that are low-carb and get the Beau to test them, but my mantra will be:

"A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the carb-craving rollercoaster."

Catchy, innit?

(Apologies for typos - am sick with a cold so am laid up in bed using my iPod touch.)

Just wanted you to know that I made a version of the choc-avocado mousse for my preschooler's lunch. (You are linked and credited.) FINALLY a way I can get avocado in her lunch without worrying about the brown oxodized look hours later when she cracks it open. The mousse was rich dark chocolately looking and she ate it up!

Thanks for posting this! I'm newly primal, and having hankering for rich n' tasty treats. I will admit, though, that using the Black & Green organic cocoa, which is veeery dark and rich, came out way too bitter for me. If I had frozen berries to add, I think it would have been good for me, in small doses...added maple syrup, and now the hubbie will eat it. Not exactly primal, but an excellent dessert for vegan/lactose-intolerant guests. I'll give this another go with a less intense cocoa powder and see what happens. Was your cocoa powder dutch-process?

Great recipe! My gf and I just took 4 avocados, 1c fair trade cocoa powder, and put it in the food processor. It was really bittersweet, so we took poured some coconut milk in a bowl, and added some coconut sap crystals, and made a syrup out of that, then poured it in. Then decided to add some organic vanilla extract, that really helped cut the bitter! A splash of lemon juice to hopefully prevent discoloration, and more time in the processor! It came out very light and airy, as I'd hoped! We were going to make a fruit tart with it, but decided to make freezer pops instead.. toasted up some shredded coconut (ok we love coconut!), mixed that in, piped it into the pop trays, and now we wait... VERY IMPATIENTLY!!! Thanks for the great idea!

I love that others are tweaking this to suit their tastes! I wouldn't be able to handle the pure cocoa/avo mix now (even with my usual addition of vanilla and cinnamon), I'd be cutting it with honey or maple syrup and maybe berries. I do put shredded coconut in, but coconut milk sounds interesting (though I've never heard of coconut sap crystals).

Girl Gone Paginatin'

Girl Gone Searchin'

I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.